Abstract
Kool, McGuire, Rosen, and Botvinick show a reliable bias toward less cognitively demanding options in free choice — extending the law of less work to controlled processing, not reducible to error avoidance or time minimisation alone.
Kool, W., McGuire, J. T., Rosen, Z. B., & Botvinick, M. M. (2010). Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(4), 665–682. DOI
Key findings
- Demand avoidance — Participants prefer low-control decks even when incentives and error rates are controlled — mean low-demand selection rates above chance across six experiments.
- Not only strategy — Bias persists when participants are unaware of the demand manipulation — not purely deliberate error dodging.
- Executive link — Avoidance co-varies with individual differences in executive-control efficacy — the felt cost is motivational, not decorative.
- Law of less work — Extends physical-effort minimisation to controlled information processing — effort weighs against rewards in the same tradeoff frame.
Limits
Laboratory demand-selection and task-switch paradigms — not long-form coaching reps or creative flow states. Later work (Wu et al., 2023) shows people sometimes prefer effort over doing nothing — boredom and context modulate avoidance. Subjective soreness in Atlas use is an operational metaphor, not a direct readout of these task parameters.
Application
When observation reps feel sore, treat the tug toward escape as expected cognitive-demand cost — not proof the rep is wrong. Pair bounded exposure with intrinsic reward on the path. Mental muscle soreness · Mental muscle soreness (doctrine). When offer-polish or “one more prep” is the comfort deck, name it as a silk fiber and cut one contact rep instead (Silk-fiber glass ceiling).